NCCC to meet on Tuesday to discuss new Covid-19 variant, Ramaphosa says
The country identified its first case of the new highly transmissible XBB.1.5 variant at the weekend
President Cyril Ramaphosa has confirmed the National CoronavirusCommand Council (NCCC) will meet to discuss the new Covid-19 variant detected in SA this week.
Speaking to journalists in Johannesburg on Monday, he said government received a Covid-19 report on Sunday which would be discussed by the NCCC on Tuesday.
The government was also monitoring the global situation.
“We have decided we need to be agile, we need to be proactive and look at this quickly and as soon as we can. There will be an announcement tomorrow [Tuesday].
“I have said there is no need to panic, there is no need for people to be concerned.
“Some people have said ‘are we going to have restrictions, the lockdown and all that?’ — far from that. We just need to be informed about what’s happening with this variant and we will be able to impart the information to the the country,” he said.
The NCCC was established in March 2020 in response to the pandemic. It consists of cabinet ministers and other stakeholders.
When government lifted the national state of disaster in April 2022 Ramaphosa announced the council would continue to meet.
The country identified its first case of the new highly transmissible XBB.1.5 variant at the weekend.
TimesLIVE quoted Maria van Kerkhove, Covid-19 technical lead at the World Health Organization, as having referred to XBB.1.5 as “the most transmissible sub-variant” detected so far.
The variant was discovered in gene sequencing carried out by researchers at Stellenbosch University from a December 27 sample, tweeted Tulio de Oliveira, head of a gene sequencing institute at the university.
XBB.1.5 has quickly become the dominant strain in the US and has been detected in at least 28 other countries, according to the WHO.
TimesLIVE
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